After a discussion with one of my players, I decided to change the magic items and treasure of my Dark Sun campaign quite a bit. We agreed that DS shouldn't have that much magic items as it needs to have with the usual 4e magic item economy. Even with the inherited bonuses you get your pluses earlier with items and the item powers usually don't scale by themselves, so new items have better powers. So it's the old rat race for the best items.
So we now don't have any enhancement bonuses on items any more. Neither to att/dam, nor to defenses. All just inherited. The items retain just their powers. In fact, I'll design most or all of them now myself. It's worth the effort since they're being used over a long time. And I can add some more fluff to them, especially by fitting the powers to who owned the item before. Just now they found "Defiler's Nightmare", a hand crossbow (for being of the sneaky kind) that protects from defilers and does more damage to them. They found it after beating some Veiled Alliance guys to death. The most fluffy part about is, that they know it has been used by the Alliance for a long time. So they may use it as some kind of key card to get into the Alliance if needed.
The items power is not as universal as the usual powers of items, which help in almost any combat, but I'm planning on adding items for different purposes and since they don't "get old" by having a fixed enhancement bonus, it becomes part of tactics to choose the right weapon, although there won't be that many. I guess I'll drop a magic item for every "non-red shirt" enemy group. So the occasional random encounter or some waylayers won't have much magic items, as I will generally reduce the amounts of treasure. This also will bring up the survival day. Those cost 5 gp and for the standard group of adventurers this is nothing to be concerned about from level 2 or 3 on. But with less treasure not only the dangers of the desert will be something unique for Athas but also having enough to eat and drink to travel the desert might come up every now and them.
One thing I was unable to solve yet are armors from superior materials. These additional bonuses to defenses are yet missed.
So, what do you think? Good idea? Terrible one? Tweaks for my rules or additional for superior materials?
So we now don't have any enhancement bonuses on items any more. Neither to att/dam, nor to defenses. All just inherited. The items retain just their powers. In fact, I'll design most or all of them now myself. It's worth the effort since they're being used over a long time. And I can add some more fluff to them, especially by fitting the powers to who owned the item before. Just now they found "Defiler's Nightmare", a hand crossbow (for being of the sneaky kind) that protects from defilers and does more damage to them. They found it after beating some Veiled Alliance guys to death. The most fluffy part about is, that they know it has been used by the Alliance for a long time. So they may use it as some kind of key card to get into the Alliance if needed.
The items power is not as universal as the usual powers of items, which help in almost any combat, but I'm planning on adding items for different purposes and since they don't "get old" by having a fixed enhancement bonus, it becomes part of tactics to choose the right weapon, although there won't be that many. I guess I'll drop a magic item for every "non-red shirt" enemy group. So the occasional random encounter or some waylayers won't have much magic items, as I will generally reduce the amounts of treasure. This also will bring up the survival day. Those cost 5 gp and for the standard group of adventurers this is nothing to be concerned about from level 2 or 3 on. But with less treasure not only the dangers of the desert will be something unique for Athas but also having enough to eat and drink to travel the desert might come up every now and them.
One thing I was unable to solve yet are armors from superior materials. These additional bonuses to defenses are yet missed.
So, what do you think? Good idea? Terrible one? Tweaks for my rules or additional for superior materials?